Numbers are definitely in fashion in the new Liberal government at the moment — and not just because the budget is landing next week.

A first-ever session on “behavioural economics” for public servants was filled to capacity last week, according to a Hill Times report. “Combining economics with behavioural psychology,” said PCO spokesperson Raymond Rivet, “this new tool can help governments make services more client-focused, increase uptake of programs, and improve regulatory compliance.

Better government through behavioural economics — the idea was popularized by the 2009 book Nudge and almost immediately adopted through the establishment of a “nudge unit” by the British government in 2010. Justin Trudeau’s government is already borrowing the concept of “deliverology” from the Brits, so the ‘nudge’ was never going to be far behind. President Barack Obama, Trudeau’s new best friend, also has taken steps to introduce nudge theory to the U.S. government in recent years.

But the real motivation for data-based governance in the Trudeau government may have come from a source much closer to home — the recent election, specifically the Liberals’ extensive use of big data to win 184 seats last fall. Make no mistake: Trudeau’s Liberals may have won the election by promising intangibles like ‘hope’ and ‘change’, but they sealed the deal with a sophisticated data campaign and ground war.

So now that the Liberals have seen how mastery of the numbers can help win elections, we probably shouldn’t be too surprised that they see those same skills as useful for governing as well. Big-data politics is here to stay.

What’s missing from that equation, however — at least on the political side — is privacy protection. Late last week, while everyone’s attention was fixated on Washington, federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien reminded a Commons committee that all the political parties are amassing data on voters without any laws to guard citizens’ privacy.

“While the Privacy Act is probably not the best instrument to do this, Parliament should also consider regulating the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by political parties,” Therrien told the Commons committee on access to information and privacy.

There’s nothing in any of Trudeau’s mandate letters to ministers about new privacy laws for political parties. And I didn’t get the impression during our recent interview that the prime minister was greatly troubled by the collision between privacy protection and political databases.

A little more than a year ago, it seemed that a new Liberal government could be expected to agree with the privacy commissioner.
Recall last year’s conference on “digital governance” in Ottawa; on stage for one panel discussion were key strategists for the three main parties — Tim Powers for the Conservatives, Brad Lavigne for the New Democrats and Gerald Butts for the Liberals. Mr. Butts is, of course, now Trudeau’s principal secretary.

Fielding questions from the audience, the three were asked whether political databases should be subject to Canadian privacy laws. Powers and Lavigne demurred; only Butts seemed to be saying ‘yes’.

“Let’s not kid ourselves, political parties are public institutions of a sort. They are granted within national or sub-national legislation special status on a whole variety of fronts, whether they be the charitable deduction, the exemption from access to information — all those sorts of things,” Butts told the conference.

“We have created a whole body of law … or maybe we haven’t. Maybe we have just created a hole in our two bodies of law that allow political parties to exist out there in the ether. I think that is increasingly a problem and it is difficult for me to envision a future where it exists for much longer.”

That was a year ago. And unless I missed it, there’s nothing in any of Trudeau’s mandate letters to ministers about new privacy laws for political parties. And without giving away too much about the new chapters of my soon-to-be-re-released book on political marketing, I didn’t get the impression during our recent interview that Prime Minister Trudeau was greatly troubled by the collision between privacy protection and political databases.

It seems odd to me that citizens can get (often appropriately) worked up about “intrusive” government measures, whether it’s the census or the C-51 anti-terrorism law, and yet be mostly indifferent to what the chief electoral officer has called the “Wild West” of political data collection.

Even Conservatives who resented the gun registry didn’t seem to mind that their own party was keeping track of gun owners in its database, so that it could send them specially targeted fundraising messages from time to time. That’s just behavioural economics, applied to the political arena.

So far, British Columbia is the only province to take steps to put political databases in line with privacy protection. The provincial chief of elections in B.C., Keith Archer, notified political parties that they would not get access to the voters’ list — the raw material of any political database — if they failed to comply with privacy laws.

That step could — and should — be implemented in Ottawa, too. We’re in the era of big-data politics and behavioural-insight governance, and Canadians are entitled to some accountability about the data the governing party is collecting and using on them.

Not so long ago, one of Trudeau’s most senior advisers agreed with that idea. Maybe all it takes is a little nudge.

Susan Delacourt is one of Canada’s best-known political journalists. Over her long career she has worked at some of the top newsrooms in the country, from the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail to the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post. She is a frequent political panelist on CBC Radio and CTV. Author of four books, her latest — Shopping For Votes — was a finalist for the prestigious Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Canadian non-fiction in 2014. She teaches classes in journalism and political communication at Carleton University.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.